Long-lost 'twins' turn Internet meeting into Kickstarter success

A still from the girls' first Skype chat. Anais: "This is a really weird experience." Samantha: "SO weird."

Two young women born in South Korea, and raised continents apart, discovered each other on the Internet and suspect they are twins separated at birth.

The girls launched a Kickstarter project to help fund their reunion and record their first in-person meeting and DNA tests in a full-length documentary. Barely two weeks later, the Internet has funded it past the target goal.

Anaïs Bordier and Samantha Futerman were born near Busan, South Korea, on November 19, 1989. Within the next year, Anaïs was adopted by a couple in Europe and grew up in Paris and Belgium. Samantha was flown to New York City to begin a new life as a Jets fan in a New Jersey family with two sons.

Neither knew the other existed until just a few months ago, but both believe they have more in common than just a birthday.

Today

Anaïs discovered Samantha when a friend showed her a YouTube video by the comedy artist KevJumba which featured a co-star who looked... just like her! Like any sensible millennial she searched for Samantha on the Internet and discovered that they were both born on the same day, in the same city. The coincidences were creepy. She sent her doppelgänger a Facebook message.

Since they first started chatting in February this year, Samantha and Anaïs have bonded over Facebook messages and Skype conversations. They seem confident of their long-lost twin-hood.

"I don’t imagine how chance could bother itself with producing two short girls with a napoleon-complex who still need to artistically sleep 10h a day & eat the rest of it..." Anaïs writes in a statement on the duo's Kickstarter page.

"It would seem only possible for us to be unrelated in a wacky, alien, zombie existing, clone-producing, twilight universe," Samantha adds, describing similarities that went beyond their looks to a love of cheese and a persisting lactose intolerance. "How is it possible to feel so strongly about some one that I have never properly met?"

878 generous citizens of the Internet have contributed $36,000 towards a documentary that will record Samantha and Anaïs's first meeting in Europe, as well as the results of that all-important DNA test which will reveal if they are really as related as they believe.

Nidhi Subbaraman writes about technology and science. Follow her on Twitter and Google+.